For me, pausing a game is needed. Things come up that demands attention.

But how would it work if the game in single-player essentially runs a co-op session?

I am no programmer, so while I am sure it can be done (just force it), it does not sound like an easy thing to do with more than one player. Sort of like sleeping in Minecraft -- everyone has to do it at the same time.

True, with co-op up to four it is of course "easier" to co-ordinate, but even so, I felt I wanted to ask how -- and if -- this would work.

This is a placeholder for something witty and clever that will both amuse and confuse you.

Could it be a spell, perhaps? You'd therefore be limited to (likely) not using it during a battle or other important event, and it'd be a neat gameplay mechanic instead of just hitting p/esc.

If you're within a range of another player, they're "frozen" along with you, and if you're farther from them, you're encased in some bubble of impenetrable energy that immobilizes you but also leaves you invulnerable? And the other player can enter the bubble or just hit P or something to join them in pausing (which then freezes gametime?)

Perhaps in co-op, if one player presses pause, a message could come up on everyone's screens saying that the game will pause in 4 seconds, but they could click a button (or press a key) to cancel it? Probably not the best solution, but it's one way you could do it perhaps.

Lolologist wrote:Could it be a spell, perhaps? You'd therefore be limited to (likely) not using it during a battle or other important event, and it'd be a neat gameplay mechanic instead of just hitting p/esc.

If you're within a range of another player, they're "frozen" along with you, and if you're farther from them, you're encased in some bubble of impenetrable energy that immobilizes you but also leaves you invulnerable? And the other player can enter the bubble or just hit P or something to join them in pausing (which then freezes gametime?)

If it's impenetrable, I can foresee that being exploited- run into a passage that you know dangerous things will spawn from (mobs, boulders etc.), let coop players loot stuff, unpause & escape.

Lolologist wrote:Could it be a spell, perhaps? You'd therefore be limited to (likely) not using it during a battle or other important event, and it'd be a neat gameplay mechanic instead of just hitting p/esc.

If you're within a range of another player, they're "frozen" along with you, and if you're farther from them, you're encased in some bubble of impenetrable energy that immobilizes you but also leaves you invulnerable? And the other player can enter the bubble or just hit P or something to join them in pausing (which then freezes gametime?)

If it's impenetrable, I can foresee that being exploited- run into a passage that you know dangerous things will spawn from (mobs, boulders etc.), let coop players loot stuff, unpause & escape.

Make it so that if you pause, you also drop aggro. Almost as if the player 'disappears' from the server to prevent this.

You have to also keep in mind that any non fullgame pausing can (and mostly likely will) result in exploits. But once again, this is co-op. Are you trying to prevent the player from 'cheating'? As long as it is all local, you're never really going to be able to get around that. A dedicated server with anti-cheat protection is really the only way. Besides, since it isn't an MMO, nor ladders, or anything like that, people are only cheapening it for themselves.

Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.

Lolologist wrote:Could it be a spell, perhaps? You'd therefore be limited to (likely) not using it during a battle or other important event, and it'd be a neat gameplay mechanic instead of just hitting p/esc.

If you're within a range of another player, they're "frozen" along with you, and if you're farther from them, you're encased in some bubble of impenetrable energy that immobilizes you but also leaves you invulnerable? And the other player can enter the bubble or just hit P or something to join them in pausing (which then freezes gametime?)

If it's impenetrable, I can foresee that being exploited- run into a passage that you know dangerous things will spawn from (mobs, boulders etc.), let coop players loot stuff, unpause & escape.

Make it so that if you pause, you also drop aggro. Almost as if the player 'disappears' from the server to prevent this.

You have to also keep in mind that any non fullgame pausing can (and mostly likely will) result in exploits. But once again, this is co-op. Are you trying to prevent the player from 'cheating'? As long as it is all local, you're never really going to be able to get around that. A dedicated server with anti-cheat protection is really the only way. Besides, since it isn't an MMO, nor ladders, or anything like that, people are only cheapening it for themselves.

Zolana wrote:You could just make the player who's paused invulnerable, in a way that doesn't affect other players or npcs etc.

If the player is invulnerable, then aggressive NPCs will still attack, just do no damage. If the player is ignored by aggressive NPCs, the player would lose aggro.

The only thing I can see working is a server-configurable quorum pause integer, where the value represents the number of logged in players currently trying to pause the game that would result in an actual pause.

Haha, just checked in to see how this is going. This feature is getting crazier by the minute!

I'm confused though, nobody really dug into what's wrong with the 'one player pauses all' solution. Is it that you guys don't like other players having that kind of control? Or that you'd prefer for there to be a 'real world' basis for pausing, like you're coming up with in these spells?

(Or maybe we don't dislike that idea and are just exploring other options? If so carry on, this is interesting.)

Railboy wrote:Haha, just checked in to see how this is going. This feature is getting crazier by the minute!

I'm confused though, nobody really dug into what's wrong with the 'one player pauses all' solution. Is it that you guys don't like other players having that kind of control? Or that you'd prefer for there to be a 'real world' basis for pausing, like you're coming up with in these spells?

I dunno. I think people are trying to think of ways to 'pause' without interrupting the other players. If that was the case, I would opt more for the other person to leave the game. I don't mean it in a bad way, but think about it. If it is a simple thing that will take you moments to do, you can tell your bodies to cover you. If it's going to take longer, then you might as well just leave and rejoin later. Whether or not you're in the middle of a fight doesn't really matter.

Diablo, Borderlands, etc. They were 4 player co-op, and people aren't arguing over issues like pause. Maybe I'm missing something? Or maybe people just have utter dicks for friends.

Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.

1) Some people are dicks2) If one person can pause the game for everyone, dicks will use the pause button to cause annoyance.3) I should note the most recent pseudocode would work as "1 person to pause it all" if server.quorumPause = 1 4) If anyone can pause the game, then anyone should be able to unpause the game- this would stop players from being inconvenienced if the pauser is AFK too long (this logic works for individual pausing/quorum pausing, btw).

Railboy wrote:

Diablo, Borderlands, etc. They were 4 player co-op, and people aren't arguing over issues like pause. Maybe I'm missing something?

Exactly, that's what I'm trying to figure out. Are we trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist? You've always got to be on the lookout for those not-actually-problems. They're the worst.

Diablo, Borderlands etc. I believe are explicitly linearish/party-based games- there's little sense or motivation to split up into teams or go off on your own to either collaborate later or perform concurrent aspects of a quest.

Frontiers is a game about exploration that'll support 4-player coop.No information given thus far indicates that all 4 players would be forced to explore together.

Individual pausing/unpausing is fine if you're having everyone explore together as a team, since it's likely that the team will be actively communicating with each other- either through text or voice chat. It starts to become a bit of a problem if you're splitting up into teams or going off on your own- yes, players would likely still be communicating AFKness/gameplay breaks through chat, but the inconvenience factor becomes unequal- this is why I'd prefer a quorum-type mechanism as the default.

I'm hoping the server is sufficiently moddable to allow other so other mechanism can be added that either enhance a groups' personal gameplay experience or are just plain weird, such as casting a spell to summon Potatothulu to "freeze time"

I suppose an alternative to a binary play/pause would be time dilation- any player can pause, but it dilates time within X radius around them, rather than suspending the entire server; Time dilation would allow team/individual play to progress uninhibited, but would possibly be the most complex solution to implement.

The "time dilation in X radius" does sound like the best overall idea... though I agree that it doesn't sound easy to script.

One other thing to consider is that we're comparing Frontiers to combat-heavy games. Frontiers will indeed have combat (duh) but if you pause and become invulnerable for a short bit in a game where combat is not the center focus, I don't see it being a problem in the vast majority of cases.

Of course, in a large battle (when they do occur) I can imagine some inconvenience as a result... but how often will that come up? In such a scenario, effectively pausing the battle you're in but not the rest of the world/server would probably be the best way to tackle this. Again, "best" doesn't mean "most feasible."

"A TV person said or did something today! Quick! We've all got to share our opinion!"-Married to the Sea

XenoReaper wrote:The "time dilation in X radius" does sound like the best overall idea... though I agree that it doesn't sound easy to script.

Given how the world clock works in the game that's going to be impossible, unfortunately.

SignpostMarv wrote:Frontiers is a game about exploration that'll support 4-player coop.No information given thus far indicates that all 4 players would be forced to explore together.

Good point - this is true, you'll be able to do stuff far away from each other.

The next-simplest option might be to modify DWMagus' suggestion and just make it really, really easy to drop out of the game temporarily - not actually disconnect, but merely cease to be present and have an influence in the game world. This wouldn't affect other characters.

Railboy wrote:The next-simplest option might be to modify DWMagus' suggestion and just make it really, really easy to drop out of the game temporarily - not actually disconnect, but merely cease to be present and have an influence in the game world. This wouldn't affect other characters.

I like that option the best, it is really simple. Like in observer status or something in other games I have played to do stuff like that. Or just be in the lobby/waiting area. But it saves your status like a session for that instance of multiplayer only. I agree w/ DW, pausing in the sense of stopping time seems kind of unnatural.

SignpostMarv wrote:Diablo, Borderlands etc. I believe are explicitly linearish/party-based games- there's little sense or motivation to split up into teams or go off on your own to either collaborate later or perform concurrent aspects of a quest.

Frontiers is a game about exploration that'll support 4-player coop.No information given thus far indicates that all 4 players would be forced to explore together.

You're absolutely right in regards to this. The only argument I have against this, and feel free to take it with a grain of salt; is that this game isn't an MMO. While it may have some sandbox elements, it is still story-driven.

That being said, if you're going to limit players to 4, it doesn't make sense that everyone will be so far off as to be in their own little world on the same server. If that's the case, it would make more sense to open up to have more than 4 players (like 20 if you have a group of friends).

Weak argument: Minecraft doesn't have this issue.

A stronger argument: Another thing to consider is people being at different parts of the story. If one of those 4 is say, 3 quests ahead of everyone else, and starts completing those, and then the other 3 catch up, does that make the quests already completed for them? What if they were story-driven quests (e.g. Save the person from a dragon that's supposed to destroy a town? Is the town destroyed when you get there?)

That's just food for thought. MMOs usually take care of this by different phases. Not sure how Unity can cope with that.

Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.

The way you say it almost seems like you need to always be on the same page on a co-op. Maybe have multiple options for playing style? Like Party/Individual so "Pause" will affect each one in a different way.

In the individual co-op play, would there a way to have quest locations/buildings be instance based for each player with Unity engine? So you could do them individually at different times without noticing other people completing them.

Seems hard to save progress. Can you save co-op worlds to pickup for play later?

If the game (or another player in the game) freezes the game for me that's the most annoying thing ever.And yes, some people are jerks and would do that just for... fun.

Railboy wrote:The next-simplest option might be to modify DWMagus' suggestion and just make it really, really easy to drop out of the game temporarily - not actually disconnect, but merely cease to be present and have an influence in the game world. This wouldn't affect other characters.

In principle, yes, but as mentioned, such a thing is very exploitable.

What would work (in multiplayer only) is a "hide in the shadows" mechanic.

Player 2 presses pause.

Player 2 sees a "Hiding" timer / progress bar filling on the screen.

Player 2 can be seen and attacked by monsters without restrictions until the timer has run to completion.

Visually (to other players), the player slowly becomes transparent as the timer progresses, stopping at maybe 30% opacity.

Once the timer has run out, Player 2 becomes invisible to monsters and invulnerable.

In single player, pause is pause. No timer needed.

The first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club. - XKCD

The way you say it almost seems like you need to always be on the same page on a co-op. Maybe have multiple options for playing style? Like Party/Individual so "Pause" will affect each one in a different way.

Straight forward answer; Yes. I hope I'm not coming off as rude, because that wasn't my intention, but you nailed it right on the head.

However, I can also argue the other point fairly well. Let's look at it from the other perspective, and let's take it to the extreme, just for argument's sake.

You have 4 people all playing in the same world. They aren't anywhere near each other. In fact, they're in separate chapters (to borrow a term from Diablo). If we're allowing this, then why allow an arbitrary limit of 4 people? I mean, afterall, you want to play with your friends, even if they're levels ahead of you; or you want a place to be social while you play. Both are valid points when we deal with this perspective.

Either way, whether you want to have any number of players wherever they are, or not, you still have the basic issues that need to be addressed.

Railboy wrote:

If one of those 4 is say, 3 quests ahead of everyone else, and starts completing those, and then the other 3 catch up, does that make the quests already completed for them?

Yes - the world is persistent. Whatever happens, happens.

This is the main crux of the argument.

The best solution I can think of is the Cube World approach; everyone is in the same party. If an event is triggered, then it is triggered for everyone all at once. To lighten the load on the server, the event start time is triggered from the server but all events are triggered locally (just on the same timeline, but I digress). I don't want to assume (but I'm going to anyways ), but considering multiplayer was but a twinkle in Lars' eyes when he first set up the stretch goals, he probably hasn't considered logistics beyond this.

Tackling a client/server framework from the perspective that everyone can be in different parts of a story at the same time isn't easy. Even Diablo couldn't allow this. If a user completed a major quest (such as kill a boss) later on, and the rest of the party caught up, that boss was already dead. The plus side is that Diablo had Battle.net, which was an easy way to create and join games without hassle. I doubt Frontiers will have that sort of back-end framework (it's not easy afterall).

TL;DR

While I think it would definitely be great to have multiple people on playing the same game (I have more than 3 other friends I wouldn't mind playing with), I don't see an easy way to handle it both logistically and practically.

Of course, if anyone can think of a good alternative, be my guest. If we can brainstorm ideas to push through roadblocks like this, I'm sure it gives Lars enough to think about and hopefully helps him in the long run.

Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.

DWMagus wrote: If one of those 4 is say, 3 quests ahead of everyone else, and starts completing those, and then the other 3 catch up, does that make the quests already completed for them? What if they were story-driven quests (e.g. Save the person from a dragon that's supposed to destroy a town? Is the town destroyed when you get there?)

I could very easily have missed something, or it could have changed since I read this, but I thought Lars said somewhere that a co-op game would have to start from scratch instead of continuing a single-player game. If that is the case, then I would imagine single player and co-op are completely separate, so while the player who is behind in your example would miss the story events in co-op, it wouldn't affect their single player game and they could see those events happen in their single player game.

DWMagus wrote: If one of those 4 is say, 3 quests ahead of everyone else, and starts completing those, and then the other 3 catch up, does that make the quests already completed for them? What if they were story-driven quests (e.g. Save the person from a dragon that's supposed to destroy a town? Is the town destroyed when you get there?)

I could very easily have missed something, or it could have changed since I read this, but I thought Lars said somewhere that a co-op game would have to start from scratch instead of continuing a single-player game. If that is the case, then I would imagine single player and co-op are completely separate, so while the player who is behind in your example would miss the story events in co-op, it wouldn't affect their single player game and they could see those events happen in their single player game.

But what would happen if you were playing with 2 friends on a co-op level, and then the next day only you and 1 other friend played. If the second friend re-joined at a later stage, they'd still be left behind right?

DWMagus wrote: If one of those 4 is say, 3 quests ahead of everyone else, and starts completing those, and then the other 3 catch up, does that make the quests already completed for them? What if they were story-driven quests (e.g. Save the person from a dragon that's supposed to destroy a town? Is the town destroyed when you get there?)

I could very easily have missed something, or it could have changed since I read this, but I thought Lars said somewhere that a co-op game would have to start from scratch instead of continuing a single-player game. If that is the case, then I would imagine single player and co-op are completely separate, so while the player who is behind in your example would miss the story events in co-op, it wouldn't affect their single player game and they could see those events happen in their single player game.

But what would happen if you were playing with 2 friends on a co-op level, and then the next day only you and 1 other friend played. If the second friend re-joined at a later stage, they'd still be left behind right?

Yeah, I realized that halfway through my reply. It still wouldn't affect their single player game, right? It's not ideal, but at least their not completely missing story altogether (unless they only play co-op).